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My sister has a 500 GB My Passport that no longer shows up when attached with a USB cable to any computer. We've tried different cables and different PCs. The drive always lights up and gives that slight vibration and warmth that indicate it's connected. But it never shows up in Explorer or Manage drives.

My sister really needs that data, so I opened up the case and removed the drive, intending to attach it via enclosure to another PC. The drive itself is a Western Digital WD5000 and where the SATA connectors should be, is the socket for the other end of the USB cable. It appears to be permanently attached to the drive.

I understand many of the recent USB HDDs do not have a clear internal HDD-Sata interface. ie. WD have gone proprietary. If this is the case then I suggest you reinstall back into original enclosure.
If it isn't being recognized in Windows Disk Management even as offline then the HDD controller board may be faulty. Can you hear the disk spinning? If it is just offline then right click at the end of the disk display in Disk Management and set to online.

You can always try free Partition Wizard to see if it recognizes the drive. This is a long shot since a linux boot disk cannot recognize the drive.
If the HDD is not recognized on other PCs and with different USB cables then you may have very expensive solutions to recovering the data. Maybe check the USB cable options and possible connector pin damage again.
A computer shop may have an old compatible controller board they may let you try/buy.

Need a Method To Extract Data From a My Passport External Drive

WD Passport external hard drive not being detectedHi,
my 80GB WD Passport is not being detected by my laptop when plugged in (by USB). A LED at the side of the external hard drive indicates that it is being powered on even though the computer shows no sign of detection (no sound indication; nothing showing up in My Computer). May someone please...

Hardware & Devices

My Passport External Hard Drive Initializing ErrorHi Everyone!
So here the problem, I got a Western Digital My Passport 1 TB External Hard Drive with 700 GB of Important Data.
Guess what? No backup and the Hard Drive is not functioning! ..and I need the Data Back and possibly the drive working too!
I have tried the drive in several PCs so...

Hardware & Devices

my external hard drive (WD my passport) not detected on my laptopHi
my 500GB WD Passport is not being detected by my laptop when plugged in (by USB). A LED at the side of the external hard drive indicates that it is being powered on even though the computer shows no sign of detection (no sound indication; nothing showing up in My Computer)
I can feel the drive...

Hardware & Devices

Need to Recover Data from WD Passport External HDMy Passport External HD suddenly failed.
- Replaced cable. Apparently this is not the problem.
- I have tried on another computer with same result.
- Light on HD is on but no sound of turning or no clicking sound.
- HD is recognized only in Disk Management. It does not show up under...

General Discussion

Best method for backing up to external hard driveI looked through the tutorial section on how to perform a backup, but I'm afraid the problem is not knowing which method to use based on what I want to accomplish.
So here it goes.
I have a 500GB internal hard drive which I run my OS from on my laptop.
I also have a 640GB external hard drive...